The approaches described in this section are approaches that could be pursued, but not necessarily approaches that have been previously conceived or pursued. Therefore, unless otherwise indicated, it should not be assumed that any of the approaches described in this section qualify as prior art merely by virtue of their inclusion in this section.
Media devices, such as digital video recorders (DVRs), set-top boxes (STBs), portable media devices, etc., receive various types of media content from over-the-air broadcasts, satellite broadcasts, cable channels, etc., and enable users to play, record, and otherwise interact with the media content. In some arrangements, a “host” media device may be configured to receive content from one or more content sources and stream the content to one or more “client” media devices. For example, the host media device may be a DVR in a user's living room and the client media devices may include other DVRs, media servers, mobile devices, etc., that are located in other areas of the user's house or elsewhere.
Current media content streaming systems typically include a host media device that receives streamable media content from a content source, stores the media content on a local hard disk or other secondary storage device, and streams the media content to one or more client devices from the storage device. Because media content is streamed to client devices from secondary storage devices in these systems, the less time it takes for a host media device to write media content streams to secondary storage, the sooner the content is available for streaming to client devices. Thus, delays in the time taken for a host media device to receive and store media content to disk may result in unsatisfactory user experiences at client devices streaming media content from a host media device.